Lawyer's former mistress accused of targeting him from jail cell

By Tony Freemantle |
June 12, 2012
| Updated: June 12, 2012 10:51pm

Yvonne and Jeffrey Stern stand together at a news conference Tuesday at their Bellaire home as his attorney, Paul Nugent, displays the letter allegedly written by Stern's former mistress, Michelle Gaiser, while in jail.

The Houston attorney who allegedly plotted with his mistress to have his wife killed is accusing his former paramour of trying to orchestrate his own demise from her jail cell for $20,000, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Michelle Gaiser, who has admitted trying to arrange hit men on three occasions to kill Yvonne Stern, allegedly tried in a detailed, four-page letter to solicit a fellow jail inmate to have Jeffrey Stern eliminated.

That inmate passed on the letter to authorities and no attempt was made on 54-year-old Jeffrey Stern's life, but his lawyer, Paul Nugent, said the threat was detailed enough that the Stern family was taking it seriously.

Stern, who acknowledges having had an affair with Gaiser but denies plotting with her to have his wife killed, is facing trial on two charges of solicitation of capital murder. Gaiser, 39, who is in jail, has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for her testimony and a 25-year cap on her sentence.

Yvonne Stern, who was badly wounded in the third attempt on her life in May 2010, filed for divorce but has reconciled with her husband and now says she doesn't believe he played any part in the scheme to kill her.

Requesting protection

Prosecutors accused Gaiser of launching the plot in January 2010, contacting a middleman to arrange the killing. They claim she twice was recorded trying to hire someone to kill Yvone Stern, a full-time mother and discussing a payment of $10,000.

One man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for attempting to kill Yvonne Stern.

Jeffrey Stern was scheduled to stand trial in April, but that was delayed after information emerged that Gaiser may have been involved in a murder-for-hire plot prior to the Stern case.

Nugent said Tuesday he could not release the letter he claims Gaiser wrote ordering the hit on Stern, but he said the FBI had investigated and determined it was authentic. He said the Sterns were making the letter's existence public because they had not been offered protection.

The FBI declined to comment, as did the Harris County District Attorney's office.

Nugent said the letter was peppered with expletives and derogatory statements about Stern and his wife. It offered details about Jeffrey Stern's daily habits and movements, including where he parked his car at his office and the need to be cautious about closed- circuit cameras at the Sterns' Bellaire residence.

"Frustration and fear"

Gaiser offered to pay her fellow inmate $10,000 up front and another $10,000 after the job was completed, Nugent said. The letter also stressed the need to make the killing look like a robbery.

"This has got to be clean," Nugent said Gaiser wrote. "This can't go back on you or me. It's something we'll both have to take to our graves."

Nugent said Gaiser suggested the inmate shoot Stern or cut his throat with a knife.

"Cut the carotid and it's over," the letter advised, according to Nugent.

In a statement, Gaiser's attorneys said the latest allegation in the case would add to the "frustration and fear" their client feels after sitting in a jail for more than two years while "Jeff Stern continues to live the good life."

"She knows better than anyone that the entire scheme against Yvonne was concocted by Jeffrey Stern, and yet he has just thrown her under the bus and continues to lie and absolve himself of any responsibility for his actions," attorney Deborah Keyser said in the statement.

The Sterns appeared together at a press conference Tuesday, but did not make any statement.